I. Feel. Awful. Like I just had the worst nightmare. I lie still, not wanting to get up. Trying to go back to sleep. As though I didn't get enough of it. I can't.
I sit straight up. The last time I felt that way, I was in the Mind Maze with the Platypuses. Wasting precious time. I open my eye- "Ow," I mumble, surprised by the light that faces me. I take a deep breath, stabilizing my vision. Or trying to. Hard to do when I feel like this. I can now make out the wall in front of me. Tidy and clean. And white. I stare in confusion at it. No...
My heart quickens and a lump rises in my throat. I forgot. I am on Earth again. I look around. This is the room I used to live in. The floor is neat and tidy. That pains me. I think of Trea's messy room. And that one tidy corner by his bed. And his hat- My hat! I scramble out of bed. I look around me. Not on the floor, like I would have put it. I check the closet. All I see are clothes. I don't have that many clothes. The girl that used to live here, that used to be me did. The hat is not in there. I swing the room door wide open, running out. I search the whole house. But the house is a stranger to me. I run into dead-ends and other doors. A woman is in one hallway. "Where is my Hat?!" I shout. The woman, Tracey is taken aback by my out burst. A man joins Tracey, puts his arm around her waist, and stares at me. "The Hat? The one I was wearing last night? Where is it?" Tracey opens and closes her mouth. She turns to him, Robert, with fear and sadness in her eyes.
"Give her what she wants," Robert says, pain in his voice. Tracey nods, but stands there, continuing to stare at me. She clears her throat.
"Manners first," she says.
"Dear," Robert says to her, "It has been rough for us all. Just give her what she wants." She looks him the eye. "Please," he whispers. One whispered word... So much meaning behind it... brings me back to the most important whispered word in my life: Stay. I feel a lump in my throat again.
"Please, Tracey. I need my hat," I say in a low, serious voice. She looks up at me, hurt. "At least tell me where it is. I can get it myself, if I must." They just stand there.
"Why do you need the hat?" Robert says, stressing the word need. I shake my head to one side.
"You could never begin to understand the meaning of it," I say, in a dangerously low voice.
"Alyss-"
"Dont!" I interrupt him. "You don't know who I am!"
"But we do," she says. I shake my head sadly.
"I am not the same."
"We've known you since before the day you were born," Tracey says.
"But you were not there when I was gone. How long has it been since you last saw me?"
"About four of the longest days of our lives!"
"How long did it feel like?" They look at me quzzically.
"Forever!"
"But you could still remember living with the girl you knew?"
"Of course!" I shake my head.
"There is the difference between your forever and mine for the past four days."
"What do you mean?" Tracey says. "Forever is just... forever isn't it?" I again shake my head.
"No. Your forever felt like it would never end. And you wanted it, needed it to end. Your forever had a begining. You remembered the things before forever." They nod. This part makes sense. The next part will be difficult for them to understand. "The past four days felt like it was forever. It streached on infinitely into the past. I didn't want it to end. I was forgetting everything before. Felt like I have always been in those four days. And I always wanted those four days to last forever."
"But it didn't last forever. And there was a before. You are still Alyssa!" Robert exclaims.
"You are still complicating things that could be simply spoken!" Tracey says.
"No. I'm not. Sometimes, more words are needed to explain. Listen. I am not the same girl. I am not the Alyssa you remember. Too much has happened in just four days. Too much to ever explain. All of which completely changed my life. That completely changed me." I pause, and look at them with kindness. "The place where I spent my forever... I belong there. Not here."
Tracey stares at me for the longest time. And then breaks into a laugh. "You are so good at pretending now!" I jerk my head back, eyes large, in utter confusion.
"Excuse me?" I ask.
"You are so good at pretending! I always knew you would be! You really ought to sign up as an actress, Alyss-"
"Dont call me that!!!" I shout. "I am not pretending with you! I quit pretending, what seems like eaons ago! Things I've seen, the people I've met, the things that had to be done, the places I've been! I could never have come up with them on my own!" She stops abruptly.
"Then tell us," Robert says.
"I couldn't even tell Chess or Trea, let alone people I don't even know anymore." They both flinch from the wound I inflicted on them unwittingly.
"That is no way to speak to your parents, young lady!" Robert says very sternly.
"Just give me the hat!"
"No."
"That hat means everything to me that is worth living for. That there is a small hope left that what I've done with my forever has not been in vain!"
"What have you done?" Tracey asks, fear in her voice
"I told you already that the Alyssa you know is not the same Alyssa as the one standing in front of you now. What I am now capable of doing, and what I should have done... you could never know or understand it. Just give. Me. That hat."
"Aly-"
"DON"T CALL ME THAT!" I scream, tears streaming down my cheeks.
"What do we call you then?" she asks in a very timid way. I wrack my brain.
"I DONT KNOW! Just give me my Hat!" I sob.
"Just tell us what it means to you," Robert says. I stop crying. I look him in the eye.
"Never. I will face all my Jabberwalks with bravery. I will never tell you! You only exist! You don't know the meaning of living! You exist in this world, only taking what you need. You don't really live." I scoff, "You don't even exist in my world, let alone living in it!" They glance at eachother. I know what they are thinking. Idiot. My Jabberwalk is now my fear of being called insane. I will face it with bravery and tell them. I take a breath. A deep, deep breath. I let it out very slowly. "Fine. You want to know. You asked for it. What do you want to know first? The part when I left you, the people I've met, the places I've been-"
"The part when you left," Robert and Tracey say at once.
"That's the easy part. One night I was having a bad dream, I couldn't sleep. Actually, that was the last time the old me got sent to her room for pretending. So I got up and explored the woods. I came to a cave, hidden by brush. I found a key. I went into the cave. I found a light that feels like glass. And it pulled me into this place I call Dimmerland. Most people know it better as Wonderland." They open their mouths to speak, but I cut them off. "I was lost there. It was daytime. I wandered in one direction so that I could get myself oriented. I found a little house. I knocked on the door. And a man opens the door. I learned his name is Istrangelabutrea. I simply call him Trea. He helped me find my way back to Earth. The place I then called home. But I couldn't get my mind off of him. So, the following night, I left to go back to Wonderland. Simple as that. Except for the minor guilt part. But Guilt is what took me back, as well. There you go, the story on how and why I left that night. Now, My hat?" They stand there, not sure what to think. "Nevermind," I say. "I'll find it myself." I walk past them. Or rather, push myself past them. Figures. All of that unessecary fuss when my hat was just beyond them, in a closet door. I grab it and put it on my head. I brush past them again and go straight to the room I woke up in.
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